


Mannequin

by anax imperator (anax)



Category: Devil May Cry
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-26
Updated: 2019-04-26
Packaged: 2020-02-04 13:49:13
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18605800
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anax/pseuds/anax%20imperator
Summary: Nero can't be with Dante anymore, but he can be with Dante's coat.An angsty little thing set post DMC5.





	Mannequin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [JustVisible](https://archiveofourown.org/users/JustVisible/gifts).



The coat smells like Dante. That's the reason Nero first puts it on, late in the evening when the lights are dim and everything seems like a good idea. Nero is about to go to bed (alone, into the bed that he once shared with Dante, that doesn't smell like Dante anymore since he changed the sheets) and he wonders if the coat smells like Dante, still.

It does. Nero brings the collar to his nose, inhales, and then puts the coat on so he can be surrounded by the scent of his lover as though it were embracing him. He goes to look at himself in the cracked bedroom mirror, posing in the long red coat, one of Dante's cast-offs. If his hair were longer, he thinks, he might be mistaken for Dante.

The coat has a rip in the sleeve from demonic claws – the reason why Dante stopped wearing it and got a new one – but if Nero turns the right way he can't see the rip in the mirror. The shoulders are a little wide for him, the coat hanging off him a bit, but it fits adequately. Nero goes into the drawer, takes out a pair of Dante's gloves, puts them on, too, just to see what it looks like.

It's still his face in the mirror, not Dante's. His hair is far too short, and he can't even swing it over his features to pretend. Nero turns and smoothes the cloth over the small of his back, checking out as best he can what it looks like from behind, and then swings around. All he needs are two holsters and Rebellion; the holsters are in the demon world, Rebellion shattered.

It smells like Dante, all around him. It feels like Dante is holding him, has tucked him away into something warm and cozy to comfort him, and Nero runs his gloved hands down his body. The gloves don't fit as well as the coat does; there is a little extra leather at the base of the fingers that Nero doesn't quite fill. That's all right. Nero closes his eyes and strokes back up his body, imagining that it's Dante.

He lays down with the coat and gloves on, and touches himself, and in his mind it's Dante's hands on his chest, on his hips, on his thighs, Dante easing down his pants to his knees and then roughly stroking him to orgasm. As he drifts off to sleep, he imagines Dante's arms around him.

* * *

The next time Nero puts the coat on, it's because his own is bloody and disgusting, and needs to go to the cleaners. The ripped red coat still smells like Dante, but not as acutely as it did before. Nero puts it on just to have something to wear while he takes his own coat in to be cleaned.

When he gets back to the shop he takes it off again and examines the rips. They aren't that bad, and the coat is made of cloth not leather, so Nero thinks he might be able to repair the tears. He digs out his emergency sewing kit and finds that the red thread is far too red so he uses brown instead, turning the coat partially inside-out to carefully mend the rips.

When he's finished, the coat doesn't look like new, by any means, but the rips are not as visible and that's all he wanted. He puts it back on, and puts his nose to the lapel where the scent of Dante's hair lingers.

Then a stranger wanders into the shop, saying, "Hello. Are you Dante?" And Nero admits that no, he is not, but he'll try to help her anyway, and she has a demon problem so Nero has to go help her. Since he needs a coat and already has one on, Nero wears Dante's red coat to the job.

The first devil to spot him mistakes him for Dante, too. Nero finds that amusing as he kills it.

* * *

The third time Nero puts on Dante's coat, it's because he wants to be mistaken for Dante. He's been growing his hair out again, and it's not as long as he wants but it's closer anyway, and Nico has been teasing him about how he looks like he's going to try out for a band. The coat still smells like Dante's body, and Nero revels in that for a while before putting on Dante's gloves and looking at himself in the mirror. He wants devils to look at him and see Dante. He wants rumors to start that Dante is back in town and ready to rumble. He can't replicate Rebellion, but nobody will find it odd that Dante is using a different weapon. Dante has a lot of devil arms stowed away; who is to say that Red Queen isn't one of them?

There's no job tonight, at least not a paying one. Nero just goes out and starts strolling around, having found, as Dante surely had, that demons lurk in the dark crevices of the city and sometimes come out at night to prey on the unwary. They've been growing more bold over the past few months – since Dante left – and Nero needs to put the fear of Sparda back into them.

So Nero makes himself look unwary, and he is jumped after less than two hours, but the demon that attacks him instantly mistakes him for Dante and skedaddles. Nero does not pursue it, wanting it to spread the word. He does kill two others, who are either less cautious or more discerning, leaving the carcasses spread out in the street for their friends to find. A fourth one he never sees, but he hears it whisper, _"Dante,"_ from the shadows as it evades him.

In the morning, Nero returns home and can't bear to take the coat off just yet, so he wears it again to bed. When he lays on his side, it feels like Dante is cuddled up to his back, spooning him, and breathing softly in his ear, and Nero cries himself to sleep.

* * *

After that, Nero just wears the coat whenever he feels like it. He wears it when he masturbates, barely able to get himself off without it now. He wears it when he goes out to hunt demons. He wears it on jobs, and to the store, and to the post office, and when he's just sitting around the shop waiting for business to drop in. He grows out his hair even longer, until it falls in a loose mop around his face, and Nico one day accuses him to doing it specifically to look like Dante.

She's not wrong, but Nero laughs it off anyway, treating it like a joke, because he doesn't want to admit that he does, indeed, want to look like Dante. He wants to look in the mirror and see his lover. He wants to hear Dante's name on the lips of demons. He wants to always feel like Dante is within arm's reach. Nero doesn't know why Dante has been gone so long, but there must be a good reason; he refuses to believe that the reason is that Dante is dead in the underworld.

Nero starts answering to Dante's name when demons call him by it, or customers ask if that's who he is. Why not? Dante isn't here to object, and Nero doesn't see a reason to correct anyone anymore. He dresses like Dante, looks like Dante, he can still smell Dante when he puts his nose to the coat's collar. He fights like Dante. Why not be Dante?

The old red coat gets some blood on it one day. Nero doesn't want to clean Dante's scent out of it, so he scrubs the bloodstains himself and finds that they don't show up too badly against the background red. Maybe that's why Dante always chose red – Nero never asked, and now is curious for an answer right when he can't get one.

The world spins and the seasons turn, and it becomes winter for the second time since Dante's disappearance. Nero finds that the old red coat is inadequate to the weather, and starts to wear warmer clothes under it, so that he won't have to wear a different one. It's a little more tattered now, the old rip in the sleeve becoming threadbare, but Nero can still smell Dante when he wears it and that is enough to keep him going back. He can't even imagine it anymore, what it would be like to be awake and not surrounded by Dante's warmth, Dante's scent, Dante's embrace.

* * *

There's a job downtown, a big one from what Nero hears. Some kind of gateway letting demons into the world. Nero rushes there, encounters demons three blocks away, starts fighting and killing them. The demons cry out Dante's name as they die, and Nero just rolls with it, not correcting them.

He becomes aware that he's not fighting alone when he takes aim at a flying beast and it is shot down before he pulls the trigger. He figures it must be Lady and just swaps back to Red Queen to keep killing. But then someone, a human-sounding someone, says, "Dante," and Nero turns.

It's Vergil, and beside him is ...

"Hey, kid," says Dante, squinting. "Is that you?"

* * *

There is no explanation provided or requested. Why did it take almost two years for Dante to return from hell? Nero doesn't care. Dante doesn't offer.

They fall together as soon as they are home, lips on lips and hands under coats. Vergil asks acidly what they think they are doing, and Dante tells his twin that they think they are going to fuck and if Vergil has any objections to that he can register them in the circular file. Vergil just walks away angrily, while Dante and Nero go upstairs.

"Is this my old coat?" asks Dante, and Nero admits that it is, but he doesn't care anymore because _Dante_ himself is here, _Dante_ is touching him and it's _Dante's_ scent that clings to him. Dante peels the coat off of him and Nero cooperates with that because he doesn't need it anymore, does he? He has Dante again.

They fuck on the edge of the bed, Dante standing with his knees braced against the mattress and Nero on his back with one leg up on Dante's shoulder. They lace their fingers so Dante can rest some of his weight on Nero's hands, and Nero throws back his head because it feels amazing. Amazing and so right, with Dante panting out his lust and Dante's cock inside Nero, stretching him perfectly. Nero eventually guides one of Dante's rough-gloved hands down to his own cock and helps Dante jack him off, so that he comes hard into the leather.

* * *

The next morning Nero wakes, and he's alone once more, with Dante's old red coat wrapped around his shoulders, and there's a pain in his belly from remembering. He cries a little before getting up, wishing he could stay in bed and keep the dream going a while longer. But there are demons to kill and bills to pay, and he can't. Dante's red coat will go with him wherever he goes, patient and kind. Nero no longer wants to wear another.


End file.
